Being a longtime fans, friends and supporters of the best design festival in the world (literally) - OFFF, we cannot skip their recent visual rebirth made by Crowd Studio

Founded by Héctor Ayuso over a decade ago, OFFF started as a concept that transformed into an event joining creative talents from all around the world all together in one place. The main goal of OFFF is to become the key meeting point for artists who share the same interests to be in one place. Today, OFFF is more than an event, it is more than a Festival, OFFF has become a community providing the ultimate creativity experience.

Evolving context

In 2013, CROWD studio, one of the most talented Barcelona based digital and design agency, has transformed the famous 3 “FFF” into one icon, it was the birth of the official OFFF logo that maintained its presence for 5 years. With with over 18 years of content and a Festival that is ever-evolving, growing every year to become one the most important event to attend worldwide while providing endless innovation, it was time for a change. The OFFF icon has finally become visually recognised by everyone, so it became unnecessary to conserve the 3 “FFF” in the logo. The OFFF icon is now visually abstract, simplified and more compact thanks to re-thickness of the symbols.

Typography

“OFFF has been conveying one true message: “our audience, our speakers and our attendees are our base. Without them this wouldn’t be possible” so for such an important brand, user-experience is very crucial. We had to create something valuable for both, past attendees and new comers, to understand the message behind OFFF and to be able to navigate through 18 years worth of contents. Starting with the typography, the most important element to the human being’s eyes, we decided to work with a corporate font, showcasing some seriousness yet with a touch of flexibility.”

Problem solving

“From concepts to various visual campaigns in every edition and with over 8 OFFF on Tour cities, OFFF Festival is always changing its aspects. But the unity of the brand and the team behind it is the Festival's foundation. Over the past few years, we have noticed an overall shift in the brand’s identity. OFFF, the brand proving itself with the concept of having no brief and giving the complete freedom plus the invitation to create, this also had its consequence. We noticed that with so many openness, the brand unfortunately lost its visual presence and visual aspect throughout the Festival, online and onsite. So how do we showcase the dynamic aspect of the brand while maintaining its base? By creating a definite strategy in the brand’s communication structure and building a branding system.”

“With this new approach we are adding more control to the brand use, where the brand gets more identified with the ability to adapt to other contents therefore the Festival becomes more firm and more strengthened.”

“While using this new system of communication grid, the website become one dynamic block of contents making it easier for the user to adapt. This allows us to recreate the whole website as a platform and as an archive of news, past speakers, new speakers and events. An organised clean space.”

OFFF was born as a festival. Today - as a way of understanding art

Please welcome new brand of the main creative festival, a Mecca for any intelligent designer and creative person. Started when millennials were born, festival grown up as the alma mater for many career starts, studios and even families. Whatever language you speak - creativity is the way to understand anyone from a first sight and OFFF is a platform to gather together and share the spirit of future.

Re-branding was made by CROWD Studio and touches all visual aspects from logo to the website

Gemini - The long awaited Main Titles for OFFF Barcelona's 18th edition by GIANTSTEP.

"This sequence is about McLuhan's famous quote "The medium is the message" infused with Greek mythology, Gemini. We adopted the story of Gemini and paralleled their story with the history of media; their secret birth, sisterhood, and death/resurrection along with letterpress printing, broadcast transmutation, and computer/AI world.

Carefully composed shots allow the viewer to experience our poetic imagination of the story that we have arranged. We made sure the visual rhythm was achieved in the manner of visual poetry by repetition of imagery."

Dive into this mesmerising sequence that explores a narrative masterpiece presenting each artist who joined OFFF Barcelona 2018.

The largest creative festival in Europe - OFFF Barcelona 2018 just started today and already shared booming news! Welcome "The Artists’ Room" by MatheryInspired by the four letters that makes the OFFF festival's name, “The Artists’ Room” tells the story of Oliver, Frida, Federica and Fiona who as they talk, never pronounce their initials.

Chinese visual designer Xiaolin Zeng was responsible for creating motion titles for Digital Design Days / "OFFF on Tour" Festival went in Milan last week.

 The starting idea is from real life experience that I had several travels to my father’s hometown where is the rural area of China, and the visual of electric Tower and woods hiding in the mist struck me. Also, I was living in a city where construction is going very frequently, which influenced my mood a lot. As a result, I’d like to make a film which the storyline goes from misty woods to industrialized city where construction is heavy. I looked into lots of materials in which have a giant as the main character and find several films and concept art, like Simon Stalenhag, Jakub Rozalski and EVA in which I learned a lot from their shot composition, and also give me a clear vision that the giant should be in a thin and incomplete body shape. While making the title sequence, I encountered the Netflix new TV series called “Dark”, I learned a lot about its color set also its soundtrack inspired the sound designer as well. This work is a huge combination of inspiration, but it starts with a real-life experience.The original color set is black and white, but I decided to use more natural color and make the sequence more like an old century film.

Second, in a row, this month OFFF on Tour festival, now baked in 6th time in Mexico brings us amazing Official Titles created by the famous Framestore (guys behind dystopian environments in the new Blade Runner)

Sharon Lock, Head of Design Studio and Creative Director, of the work: "Creating the OFFF CDMX titles has been such an incredible and challenging experience for us all, and I'd like to thank Hector Ayuso for the opportunity to be part of such an iconic event. I'm really humbled that a complete indulgence of everything I love has been pulled together into a single piece of work by such a talented team of artists.

The team has learnt so much in such a short space of time, and it is testament to their dedication and commitment, working above and beyond in their own time, that we've managed to create such a beautiful sequence. I'm honoured that it has been for OFFF, whose creative integrity we've all admired for years."

“Just Say Yes” is a film on the idea of fear being represented as a positive generator, showcased through Héctor Ayuso’s figure (OFFF Festival founder and triathlon athlete) and on how he confronts his own fears by running towards them, through sports triathlons, by simply saying YES.

Based on Héctor’s life motto “just say yes”, the film narrates the story on overcoming risks and turning them into goals. From personal stories to documented sports events, the project includes various collaborations with artists, friends and previous OFFF artists to reflect both creativity and sports lifestyles as we will witness the last biggest fear which Héctor will conquer: Ultraman Florida, an extreme Individual Ultra-Endurance Event.

As OFFF festival ended and revealed new dates for the next magical experience during 24-26 May of 2018, we are pleased to share the Main Titles directed by Vallée Duhamel

Inpired by the 1980's Tango short film by Zbigniew Rybszynski, OFFF Barcelona's 2017 Main Titles are a true beauty. Known for their "high class lo-fi" work profile, Vallée Duhamel duo - Eve Duhamel and Julien Vallée - have took the challenge and decided to work on a one of kind piece to showcase the names of all the speakers who took part of this year's edition followed by a live session of shooting 2,000 paper-planes by the audience during their talk.

As the largest European design festival rolls out on the shores of sunny Barcelona, OFFF team decided to rid off traditional "Open Titles".

This year is a game changer as festival approached its 16th instalment, director Hector Ayuso called up OUTRO Studio and under direction of Marc Castellví with Àlex Monner and Greta Fernández they created a short movie "New Senses". The title corresponds to OFFF 2017 Festival concept.

Outro studio have decided to represent OFFF as an essential element, a brand that provides a formula for a sensorial rebirth - everything you see, hear, taste, touch and smell is a first time experience.

The Main Titles for OFFF CDMX 2016 were produced by combining analog and digital techniques; blurring the boundaries to become one. Deeply inspired by the complexity of nature, MATERIA explores the uniqueness of highly detailed structures and organic shapes.

A six month secret project incubated inside the Sub Rosa lab performed live at the OFFF Festival in Barcelona Spain. This 40 min rendering is from 27 unique, real-time, audio reactive systems to drive algorithmic animations. Each of the 27 animation systems we’re cue’d at key points in a 40 min track, with some new original music by Madame Gandhi, pre-mixed by Kiran and Alexia Riner. On stage, Kiran live drummed on top of the mix in addition to using OSC (Open Sound Control) to have her percussive hits change variables in the animation system. I also had a base set of variables that I could trigger via OSC that further controlled different aspects of the animation overall.

What happens when you mix the ultimate fun souls with award winning designers and a rapper? BOOM! A massive explosion of creativity shooting right at you. Watch OFFF Barcelona 2016 Main Titles by Merlin Crossingham and Gavin Strange with Aardman Animations

Paris-based Hellohikimori proved "French do it better" saying another time again. Transhumance, the periodic migration of a share of livestock (cattle, deer, horses or sheep) from the plain to the mountains or the mountain to the plain. We can't stop watching OFFF Tour Qc Main Titles by (HKI)™ HelloHikimori™! Music by the masters Niveau Zero

For the 16th year in a row we decided to show you a taste of what OFFF preparations seem like. The school of Atelier worked on a campaign with a twist to show off the reality of every OFFF member and OFFF speaker every year: a mix of pure craziness, hard work, adventures, nervousness and fun! Watch this only at OFFF this May 2016! Grab your tickets now on http://offf.ws

"OFFF on Tour" festival-on-demand system is getting hotter and recently Porto represented a small version of the largest design event in Europe. Here is a Main Titles directed by The Mill and spiced by Echolab music

Just a week after OFFF Russia 2015 closed and started working on the next year event we are able to watch their epic titles created by Russian studios HYPE Production and FastFoxes. Inspired by the era of the greatest Soviet cinematography - OFFF Russia Opening Titles are a small masterpiece melting down past and future. Enjoy it now and regret you have not visited OFFF Russia this year.

After visiting OFFF 2015 I've got two decks of cards, one designed by Signalnoise and Onesize to represent each speaker's name and another one real playing cards created in collaboration with dozens of awesome illustrators and Playing Arts project. So I decided to pick up a random card from both of them and do a post on Desingcollector time to time.Here we go, and the first card from OFFF15 Official Deck is ATELIER.

Actually Atelier is a multidisciplinary school born at OFFF Festival. Started in 2010 Atelier granted diplomas to 5 groups of art students you might seen life in Barcelona at OFFF Festivals. All of their projects has been related to the festival and even to official open titles you may watch below